Television surrounds American lives. About 98.3% of the homes in the United States have television sets, with an average of 2.2 sets per household. Television is turned on more than seven hours per day in the average home, with each individual watching approximately four and a half hours per day.
High definition televisions are a recent addition to the suite of televisions available for home usage. With 1080 lines per picture and a screen aspect ratio (width to height ratio) of 16:9 (compared to 525 lines per picture and a 4:3 screen aspect ratio of standard definition television), high definition televisions provide more resolution than standard definition television (SDTV). The crystal-clear quality wide-screen picture and compact-disc quality surround sound have made high definition televisions the future of television.
Users of televisions have become accustomed to some of the screen area being taken up by more than one image window, such as during picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture viewing. Once picture-in-picture or picture-by-picture viewing is selected by the television user, the content provider and not the television user controls the content received in each picture window.
The screen area of a television may be put to better use than at present. For example, a user may desire to have a music application up in one window to play music and have a cooking application up in another window to display a favorite recipe. However, because the content provider controls the content received, a user is unable to select a music application to play in one window and a picture or movie application to play in the second window. Thus, a conventional television is unable to present such desired content.
With the advent of applications which execute remotely, there will be a very large suite of applications available to a user. Some of these remote applications will allow interaction with media content. Users of conventional televisions are unable to take advantage of these remoted applications. What is needed is a system that permits a television user to select and display a broad spectrum of media and applications content on a home television.